GUESTS
FROM GERMANY - Architect Henry Elden of Charleston points out a
city land-mark to Artur Bonacker, center, and his son, Burchard, of Bremen, West
Germany. The Bonackers are in the United States on business, and they have been
guests of the Eldens. Bonacker, first officer on a U-boat during World War II,
now designs and manufactures photographic slide cabinets.

Artur
Bonacker, 54, is now a well-groomed West German entrepreneur, who designs and
manufactures photographic slide cabinets used for storing and instant viewing of
numerous transparencies.

But,
during World War II, Bonacker was the First Officer on a German U-boat that, at
times, came close to hitting the United States where it would really hurt - in
the nation's shipyards.

Bonacker
and his son. Burchard, 24, of Bremen have been in the United States on business,
and, before leaving for New York this morning, they were guests of architect
Henry Elden and his wife in Charleston.

Bonacker
served as a U-boat officer from 1941 to 1943, and one of his crew's missions
that he recalled during an interview today was to cruise into Delaware Bay and
up the river to the Philadelphia Naval Yards.

The
mission was to have been conducted in 1943, as he recalls, but the engineer on
his U-boat were assigned to German infantry units. During the days that
remained, 18 of the 20 officers were killed in action.

After the
war, the Germans were destitute, Bonacker recalls, but gradually, he and his
fellow countrymen prospered. In 1952, he set up his company, which exports the
steel, wood and plastic slide cabinets across the same seas his U-boat prowled
more than 20 years ago

On the
more aggressive aspects of wartime activity, when asked what the intent of that
mission was, he said, "What do you think?".

Another
incident he recalls is his boat taking up a post in the Atlantic, just off
Norfolk. The U-boat was there for about a week, he said, and at times they would
surface and observe. -what appeared to be "a forest" of masts in the ship yards.
No attack occurred, he added.

While he
was on the U-boat he saw service in the North Sea, the North Atlantic and the
South Atlantic, and he estimates …and during one convoy tracking, three of the
five U-boats assigned to the four-week mission were sunk by destroyers. His boat
was one of the two to survive.

Near the
end of the war, when the "die was cast," he and 19 other German naval officers
were summoned to Berlin. They were told that they would become the personal
guards of Hitler and accompany. him when he fled to the Alps by plane.

On the
day of the flight, however, the plane could not take off because of the
overwhelming number of Allied aircraft in the area, and the mission was aborted.

The 20
naval officers were; told that Hitler would remain in Berlin, and they
subsequently ...